Bloomberg reports:

The U.S. government and the Federal Reserve have spent, lent or guaranteed $12.8 trillion, an amount that approaches the value of everything produced in the country last year, to stem the longest recession since the 1930s... 

The money works out to $42,105 for every man, woman and child in the U.S. and 14 times the $899.8 billion of currency in circulation. The nation’s gross domestic product was $14.2 trillion in 2008. 

Look at the table:

MENDOTA, Calif. — The customer seemed interested in a black blouse offered for $1 at the thrift store. But instead of buying it, she set it on the front counter.

Maybe tomorrow, she told the cashier, she would have the money. Or the next day. But not now.

"That is the way people are now," said the cashier, Alicia Reyes, as she watched the middle-aged woman walk out of the store. "They just come in here and look. They just come in here to kill the time. And then they take off."

Welcome to life in Mendota — the unemployment capital of California. With a 41 percent jobless rate, the town's social fabric is tearing at the seams. Alcoholism and crime are on the rise. To save money, some mothers wash and re-use disposable diapers. Unemployed men with nothing to do wander the streets and sit on benches....

The national Katrina is here and now.

I caught this off Huffingtonpost.com about Jim Cramer and his boasting of what he did as a hedge fund manager:

-On manipulating the market: "A lot of times when I was short at my hedge fund, and I was positioned short, meaning I needed it down, I would create a level of activity before hand that could drive the futures,"

-On falsely creating the impression a stock is down (what he calls "fomenting"): "You can't foment. That's a violation... But you do it anyway because the SEC doesn't understand it." He adds, "When you have six days and your company may be in doubt because you are down, I think it is really important to foment."

Check it out

Josh Marshall, Talkingpointsmemo.com, found this little backgrounder about Tim Geithner:

...Sandy Weill, the guy who in the 1990s built Citi into the mammoth systemic risk Death Star it is today wanted the job [CEO] to go to Tim Geithner.

So if Geithner is ousted from Sec. of Treasury then he could simply jump on the Citigroup ship?   This is what Felix Salmon, Portfolio.com, thinks. 

What a marvelous stinking revolving door.  While we the taxpayers are stuck with people like Geithner who still talk of "free market" and "private companies" as being the be all and end all for the American economy.

BTW- Meanwhile, President Obama thinks of the netroots and bloggers in this light:

And part of the reason we don’t spend a lot of time looking at blogs is because if you haven’t looked at it very carefully then you may be under the impression that somehow there’s a clean answer one way or another – well, you just nationalize all the banks, or you just leave them alone and they’ll be fine, or this or that or the other. 

Duncan Black, Eschaton blog, writes:

I find it more amusing than annoying that Obama has joined with many others in employing the rhetorical trick of attributing any views you wish to marginalize as coming from bloggers.

I guess we, the netroots and bloggers, are just too darn new, still!   Perhaps Obama is still an intermediary step in the new political landscape and political process; i.e., Dean for America as version 1.0 then MyBarackObama as version 2.0 but what will version 3.0 look like?

Isn't it about time to have our government start a new financial system?  Bloomberg News has estimated that we are now in debt to the tune of over 11 trillion dollars for bailing out grifters.  The biggest rip off in history.

Sign this to tell Congress no more bailout money for con men.  It is time to start a new financial system.

Firedoglake.com has a petition to sign. 

• The Fed's Vice Chair Donald Kohn has refused to comply with requests from both the House and the Senate for the names of banks receiving federal funds, angering Republicans and Democrats alike.
• Bloomberg estimates that the government has spent more than $11.7 trillion to save the financial system since the crisis began, but Fed has refused to comply with Bloomberg's requests for details under the Freedom of Information Act.
• We know now that $80 billion of the $162 billion used to bailout AIG went to pay off its derivative trading partners at the full value of their contracts, despite the fact that values had tumbled. Economist Nouriel Roubini calls it "a nontransparent, opaque and shady bailout of the AIG counterparties: Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and other domestic and foreign financial institutions.
• The House passed the TARP Reform and Accountability Act on January 16, which would provide increased conditions, transparency and accountability for Wall Street bailout funds. The Senate is refusing to take up the legislation."